Kern wrote:
Last night's
Nick Drake prom was excellent with some really good arrangements of his work. Worth a listen.
He's someone who I won't listen to for ages then every time I hear his stuff I remember how amazing it is.
Oh, I hadn't noticed that was on, I'll set aside some quiet time to listen to it.
I have a friend, Tim, who worked at Island records in the 70's. He was a gopher/gig runner/driver/odd job man/jack of all trades and one of his regular tasks was to deliver Nick Drake's royalty cheques to his home at Tanworth-in-Arden. Nick always used to cadge cigs off him.
I'd never heard of Nick until Tim came up to Manchester for a week to cover for Island's northern delivery driver who was going on holiday. In those days Island did their own record distribution for themselves, plus Trojan and Charisma. Tim didn't know the area, so I was navigator for the week as we visited record shops in Lancashire and Yorkshire. There was an 8 track tape player in the van, so we used to use van stock for our entertainment on the road, and that was when he introduced me to Nick's music.
While Tim was in the north, we stayed at another a friend's cottage in the middle of a field in Wildboarclough, out in the countryside near Macclesfield. Apart from navigating, my other job was to wake Tim every morning as he was a very heavy sleeper and he needed to be up early to go to Piccadilly Station in Manchester to collect stock for delivery. Every day it took about 5 minutes to rouse him, even using an alarm clock with twin bells on the top that made a tremendous racket.
At the end of the week Tim said he’d like to pay me for my help, so I could choose anything from van stock as my ‘wages.’ Island’s stock control was very rudimentary at the time, so a few albums disappearing wouldn’t be noticed. Tim used to barter with record shops if he spotted an interesting album, offering them an extra copy of an album they’d ordered as a swap. I got 20 albums for my trouble, including Nick’s ‘Five Leaves Left’ and ‘Bryter Later.’ Still two of my favourite albums from those days.
I also stayed at Tim’s flat in Powis Terrace, just around the corner from Island's offices on Basing Street, with a few of my hippy friends, when we went to London to attend the Oz Magazine ‘obscenity’ solidarity concert in Hyde Park in 1971. The headliners were Grand Funk Railroad, allegedly the loudest band in the world at the time, supported by Pink Fairies and a few other bands.
Tim went on to work at Virgin Records and was Bob Marley’s travelling tour PR rep, among other things.
Hippy, happy days.